The U.s. Climate Change Tort Litigation

In2007, the Supreme Court delivered its opinion regarding Massachusetts vs. EPA, Justice Stevens writing the decision for the majority opined that carbon dioxide meets the definition of "pollutant" in the Clean Air Act and that EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Afterwards, EPA issued several regulations and rules to regulate greenhouse gases, such as tailoring rule and CAFE for cars and light trucks. But all of these actions have been challenged by the interested parties. The Congress is not making much progress regarding climate legislation; these suits are beginning to play an important role in pushing the legislation process forward. With the suits challenging EPA’s actions going on, a new kind of suits are being filed to courts. These suits are brought under federal common law, and are of the nature of climate torts. There of them shall be discussed in this paper:Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp. and Connecticut v. American Electric Power. Questions like Political Question Doctrine, Article III Standing, Prudential Standing and Parens Patriae Standing have been raised in the cases. And it is worth researching and studying their roles in this cases. A large chunk of the paper will be devoted to the studying of state standing. In2011, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the AEP case and ruled against the plaintiff (the respondents in the oral argument) in June. Justice Ginsburg based the Court’s ruling on the fact that the EPA’s administrative regulations have displaced the federal common law and the Court sees it fit that EPA should be responsible for the regulation of greenhouse gases. The Court did not dive deep into the analysis of political question doctrine and plaintiffs standing issues. AEP is a separation of powers case and the final ruling of the case is going to have significant implications on the climate litigation and legislation in United States.